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A new edition of the Science Festival, the 17th, will fill the  Born Culture and Memory Centre and Plaça Comercial with informative activities for all audiences. This year, the Festival begins on Friday  7 June, with a morning focused on the schools that have participated in the  Citizen Science in Schools programme, but it opens to everyone on Saturday  8 June (from 11 am to 11 pm) and Sunday   9 June (from 11 am to 8 pm).

This Science Festival is highlighting four main themes: water and the sea, climate change, artificial intelligence and archaeology. These themes appear in many of the activities, but as always the event encompasses a wide variety of other disciplines, like physics, future materials, the social sciences, ecology, biomedicine, mathematics, space exploration, nanotechnology, biodiversity and the relationship between art and science.

The Festival is also expanding in space and time, as it will also be housed in two facilities in the city's new science hub, the Citadel of Knowledge, and it will be held Saturday night, with a range of activities designed for young people and adults.

The programme features more than 150 activities of all kinds, including workshops, experiments, performances, a science slam, humorous monologues, routes, guided tours, demonstrations, storytelling, reading, dance, radio interviews, installations, games and much more. It is an ocean of activities held in 30 different spaces organised by almost 120 institutions and organisations with more than 200 people bringing science to everyone.

The Science Festival is organised around four main themes. The first is the sea. In the middle of the decade of ocean sciences for sustainable development (2021-2030), and dovetailing with an important year for the city in its consolidation as a global touchstone of sailing and the blue economy, given that it is the host of the America's Cup, the Science Festival wanted to spotlight the sea and ocean preservation.

The second is climate change, another important field of scientific knowledge that will inspire a series of activities. They will focus on topics like drought, alternative energies, the effects of climate change and health.

The third is artificial intelligence (AI), a timely topic that is prompting a far-reaching scientific and social debate that will be the subject of demonstrations and workshops that explore the limits and potentialities of creating with AI. Finally, given that the Born Culture and Memory Centre is one of the Science Festival venues, special emphasis is being placed on the theme of archaeology and learning about the past with the help of science.

Just like every year, even though these are the core themes, activities on many other science- related themes are also planned, including biomedicine, the world of numbers and data, astronomy and space exploration, nanotechnology, the maker world and the interrelation between art and science.

Featured activities this year

During the daytime hours of Saturday and Sunday from 11 am to 8 pm, activities for all audiences, but especially families, are planned. On Saturday evening from 7 to 11 pm, special activities for adults are planned, especially designed for young people age 16 and over.

The stage set up in Plaça Comercial, the Dolors Aleu stage, will be the epicentre of the festival in the daytime and the venue for the performances. On Saturday evening, it will be joined by a second indoor stage, the Born stage, which will add more activities along with those in the other venues.

Regarding the activities, there will be new spaces, like the ones focusing on the sea and on our past, as well as the classic spaces, like maths challenges, sun observation and a reading space. There will be activities related to water, such as workshops, storytelling in the reading space called ‘El camí de l’aigua’ [The Way of Water] and a show on the Dolors Aleu stage entitled ‘Entre bigotis: els misteris de l’aigua’. There will also be guided tours called ‘Com l’aigua dibuixa la ciutat’ [How Water Shapes the City] in the evening.

The family activities for all ages include the exhibition on the Science Courtyard by the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC), the Barcelona Nautical Sciences Faculty (UPC), the Club Patí Vela Barcelona, the Marine Technology Unit (UTM-CSIC) and Fab Lab.

Patí de Vela is a small catamaran built in a traditional, sustainable way. The outcome of folk ingenuity, it was created on Barcelona’s coasts around 100 years ago during the Industrial Revolution, with the goal of finding clean water at sea for pleasure bathing. If Patí de Vela is equipped with a series of low-cost sensors, it becomes a low-cost vessel where Barcelona's coast can be studied easily and sustainably.

On Saturday night AI music from a future world is on tap, featuring Beyond Collapse with the support of Artificia, the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC) and KreoMusica. It is an electronic music show featuring two DJs who go beyond the limits of creativity thanks to the use of artificial intelligence. In this activity, the audience is immersed in sensorial ecstasy in eight chapters of a futuristic symphony brimming with questions and new possibilities about the relationship between humans and AI.

On the occasion of the Festival, the Martorell Exhibition Centre, the Barcelona Natural Science Museum will be holding an open house.

City residents can visit the two current exhibitions free of charge: ’Wow. Museum animals: Science, technique and art’, in conjunction with the Science Park of Granada, and ‘Nature or Culture? A look at natural science museums’.

You can also visit the recently renovated Hivernacle in Parc de la Ciutadella free of charge. Climate machine is the exhibition there which reflects on the past, present and future of greenhouses.

There will also be guided tours of the archaeology site at the Born by the Born Culture and Memory Centre.

Guided tours have been scheduled all day long, so visitors can learn about the ruins at the Born archaeology site: the art of buildings, the landscape laboratory and how water has shaped the city.

See the general programme here